General GMAT Test-Taking Techniques

You may have heard that you can't study for the GMAT. But that's just not true! There are a bunch of things you can do to prepare yourself, and the more time you spend, the better your scores will be. In the first lesson, you'll learn everything you need to know about the general makeup of GMAT so that you'll know exactly what you're getting into come test day. You'll learn how to relax when you start feeling panicky, how to eliminate the wrong answers the tests try to entice you to choose, how to guess when you're not sure of the right answer, and how much time to spend on each question.

Overview of GMAT Sections

If you're not familiar with the kinds of GMAT questions in the different sections, you'll know exactly what to expect once you're finished with this lesson. You'll get a taste of the format of reading comprehension, sentence correction, and critical reasoning questions, as well as the analytical writing section. The lesson will also cover problem solving and data sufficiency questions in the quantitative section and introduce the question types found in the integrated reasoning section. The course will go over the information in much more detail in the upcoming lessons.

Reading Comprehension: Questions and Practice

You've been reading since you were a kid, but that's not enough experience to get you ready for the GMAT passage-based reading questions. There's more to these babies than just reading a passage and working through its questions, and after you finish this lesson, you'll have the tools you need to develop your own personal reading strategy.

You'll learn how to glide through even the most sleep-producing reading topics by focusing on what's important and ignoring what's not. Then you'll find out how to eliminate answers that hook other unprepared test-takers and spot the distracters the test-makers use to make wrong answers seem right. After that, the lesson will steer through GMAT reading comprehension passages that have appeared on past tests to give you a step-by-step approach for getting the most information from the passages in the least amount of time. You'll finish the lesson by practicing these skills on actual GMAT reading questions.

Sentence Correction: Questions and Practice

The GMAT has some multiple-choice question types (called sentence correction questions) that test your grammar and English usage skills. In this lesson, you'll go over a detailed strategy for tackling each of them. You'll learn what errors crop up most commonly in the given sentences so you can focus your attention on what's important, and you'll find out what questions are best to skip if you notice that you're running short of time. Knowing the rules of grammar is essential to maximizing your score on sentence corrections, and this lesson gives you the goods, but it won't bore you with every grammar rule known (or unknown) to the English-speaking public. You'll only review the rules that are most commonly tested on the GMAT.

Critical Reasoning: Questions and Practice

You may not have seen the GMAT critical reasoning questions before. Even though they may be unfamiliar, by the time you've completed this lesson, you'll know just how to tackle them, and they may just end up being your favorite GMAT test questions! In this lesson, you'll review the elements of a logical argument and the major types of inductive arguments you'll see on the GMAT. Then you'll go through step-by-step instructions on how to examine each type of argument and pick the best answer to each question.

Analytical Writing: Assessment and Practice

For years, MBA programs have complained that students don't know how to write. So you're going to give them a sample of the way you write before you even get to graduate school. If the thought of writing a complete analysis of an argument in about a half an hour has you running for the hills, don't despair. In this lesson, you'll go over a specific plan for making the most of your time so you can prove to the admissions committee of your favorite graduate program that you can put your thoughts together in a cohesive and interesting essay. You'll also compose sample essays and get the chance to read what other test-takers write.

Arithmetic and Algebra Review

You learned arithmetic in grade school, but you may have forgotten some of the basics that you'll see on the GMAT math. Don't worry, you'll review all the essentials in this lesson. The lesson will go over a lot of the things you probably remember, like how to perform multiplication and division, as well as some of the things that might be a little fuzzy, like exponents and fractions. The GMAT also tests your knowledge of standard algebra. It will go over variables, factoring, and a whole bunch of other fun stuff so that you know exactly what you need to answer the many algebra-related questions the GMAT has to offer.

Geometry and Advanced Mathematical Concepts

This lesson covers linear geometry, geometric shapes and measurements, coordinate geometry, statistics, and more. If you can't remember (or never learned) the difference between mean, median, and mode, this lesson will help you!

Problem Solving Questions

This lesson will focus on the most common type of GMAT math question—the multiple-choice question. Through a thorough examination of GMAT math questions from previous tests, you'll learn how to work through all kinds of multiple-choice math. You'll be whipping through the answer choices in no time!

Data Sufficiency Questions

The quantitative portion of the GMAT contains a question type that doesn't appear on any other major standardized test. It's called the data sufficiency question because instead of figuring out the answer to a math problem, you have to determine whether the information provided is sufficient to figure out the answer to the math problem. If this sounds a bit complex, don't worry! The lesson will provide you with a step-by-step chart to help you flow through these problems, giving you plenty of practice on prior GMAT data sufficiency test questions.

Quantitative Practice

This course will go over a lot of information, and you probably won't remember all of it, even with all of the additional work you put into each lesson. So in this lesson, you'll go back over all of the tips and strategies you'll need to know to do your best on the math questions on the GMAT. You'll also take a practice test.

Integrated Reasoning and Course Wrap-Up

This lesson covers the newest section of the GMAT: integrated reasoning. It will also talk about test-taking techniques so that you can do as well as possible on the test.